Hagel Hearings Showcase Pro-Israel Agenda

If former Defence Secretary-designate Sen. Chuck Hagel’s lacklustre performance
at his confirmation hearing Thursday heartened neo-conservatives and other hawks
opposed to his nomination, those who argued that the Israel lobby has been exerting
too great an influence on U.S. foreign policy were ecstatic.

Indeed, Stephen Walt, the Harvard international relations professor who co-authored
the “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, issued
a special thanks to the Senate Armed Services Committee that held the hearing
on his foreignpolicy.com blog Friday, suggesting that controversial 2007 book
should sell like hotcakes after what he called “the Hagel circus”.

“I want to thank the Emergency Committee for Israel, Sheldon Adelson, and the
Senate Armed Services Committee for providing such a compelling vindication
of our views,” wrote Walt, who, among other things, has been accused of anti-Semitism
for writing a book that criticised the allegedly excessive influence the Israel
lobby wields over U.S. foreign policy and the public debate that surrounds it.

As evidence, Walt cited the number of mentions of Israel and its most powerful
regional foe, Iran, received in the course of Hagel’s eight-hour ordeal – 166
and 144, respectively, according to a compilation
by the Internet publication, Buzzfeed.

By comparison, he noted, the epidemic of suicides among U.S. troops – a necessary
concern for any incoming Pentagon chief – was addressed only twice.

In fact, the degree to which Israel and the threat posed to it by Iran dominated
the hearing was somewhat understated by Buzzfeed. The full transcript revealed
that Israel was brought up no less than 178 times, followed closely by Iran
with 171 mentions.

Those numbers compared with a grand total of five mentions of China, the central
focus of the Obama administration’s much ballyhooed “pivot” from the Middle
East to the Asia/Pacific; one mention (by Hagel himself) of Japan, Washington’s
closest Asian ally whose territorial dispute with China has recently escalated
to dangerous levels; and one mention of South Korea, Washington’s other major
treaty ally in Northeast Asia.

Similarly, NATO, Washington’s historically most important military alliance
– and one with which it fought a successful air war in Libya last year
and is currently fighting its 12th year in Afghanistan – warranted a total
of five mentions.

“It is extraordinary that, in an eight-hour hearing, as little attention was
devoted as it was to issues such as China and NATO, which ought to be near the
top of the concerns for any secretary of defence of the United States,” said
Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence
Officer for the Near and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“The emphasis on Israel and Iran – which, in American politics, has become
for the most part an Israel issue – demonstrates that the senators were
far less concerned with the strategic questions that the secretary of defence
should be focused on and much more interested in trying to defeat a nominee
who has strayed from political orthodoxy, especially on issues related to Israel,”
he told IPS.

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator from Nebraska,
has come under sustained attack from neo-conservatives – who still exercise
a preponderant influence on the Republican Party’s foreign policy views despite
the general unpopularity of the Iraq war which they championed – since
he was first rumoured to be Obama’s top choice to succeed Leon Panetta as Pentagon
chief in mid-December.

The New York Times
reported Sunday that billionaire Sheldon
Adelson, the single biggest contributor to the Republican presidential campaign
last year and a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
was involved in the campaign, by far the most expensive and organised ever mounted
against a cabinet nominee.

Initially joined in their attacks by some leaders of the more-mainstream and
bipartisan Israel lobby, they charged, among other things, that Hagel was anti-Semitic
(in part because he had used the phrase “Jewish lobby” on one occasion) and
hostile to Israel.

Conversely, they complained, he has been too sympathetic toward Palestinians,
too eager to engage Iran and other Israeli foes diplomatically, and too averse
to using military force, particularly against Iran if negotiations over its
nuclear programme fail.

On these issues, they argued in a mantra subsequently adopted by half a dozen
Republican senators, Hagel was “out of the mainstream” or even “far to the left
of” Obama himself.

In fact, Hagel’s views on the Middle East and the use of military force, in
particular, not only largely reflect those of the administration and, according
to public-opinion
polls, of a war-weary electorate, but also of most of the foreign-policy
elite. Dozens of retired top-ranked diplomatic, intelligence, and military officials,
as well as former Cabinet officers from both Republican and Democratic administration
have rallied to Hagel’s defence in recent weeks.

But those “mainstream” views are not reflected in Congress, where the Israel
lobby has long wielded its greatest influence.

While its main institutions, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), declared their neutrality on the nominee after his formal nomination
by Obama earlier this month, they worked with sympathetic senators from both
parties and their staffers to ensure that particular questions would be asked
that would elicit reassuring answers with respect to both supporting Israel
and preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear bomb by any means necessary.

The effort – which was supplemented by angry prosecutorial performances by
several senators, notably John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Ted Cruz, closely
associated with neo-conservatives – largely worked, as Hagel recanted or softened
some of his more-provocative previous statements to the disappointment of many
of his supporters.

But, in some respects, the effort, as suggested by Walt, succeeded too well,
simply because it demonstrated quite dramatically to the interested public how
completely Israel dominates the foreign-policy agenda, at least on Capitol Hill.

After all, the U.S. remains the world’s one superpower with interests in every
country. Its defence budget – at well over half a trillion dollars this year
— is greater than the combined budgets of the 10 next-most powerful militaries.

Several key regional powers with which Washington has been trying hard to build
or already enjoys strong defence relationships – notably India, Brazil,
Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia – were not mentioned even a single time. Vietnam
was mentioned 41 times but exclusively in relation to Hagel’s wartime service
there or his work as a senior official in the Veterans Administration.

“They were not asking questions that had any relevance to the tasks facing
the secretary of defence, in terms of either the military or budgetary challenges
we face,” noted Amb. Chas. Freeman (ret.), whose appointment early in the Obama
administration to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) provoked such
a furious campaign by neo-conservatives and key Israel lobby figures that he
felt compelled to withdraw his name from consideration.

“So there was no serious discussion of defence or larger strategic issues,”
he told IPS. “What was there was a lot of grandstanding about whether
or not the nominee was politically correct.”

…don't be so narrow minded…the rights of illegal aliens also matter…If that proverbial visitor from another planet landed in the US Senate, he'd be sure the "esteemed members" were the Knesset or representatives of Mexico. Our government is not ours as surely as if the USSR had beaten us at war.

There are two major fears of a US Federal Politician or one that aspires to those offices, AIPAC will either fail to fund their campaigns or worse they will fund someone elses campaign against them!

Of course it could be fixed by declaring AIPAC and its associated groups as foreign Lobbiests, and making any person that has worked for AIPAC and its associates foreign lobbiests, requiring permanent foreign lobbiest status! Also a law that bans foreign Lobbiests from working within the US government, in any capacity!

MvGuy

"Of course it could be fixed by declaring AIPAC and its associated groups as foreign Lobbiests, and making any person that has worked for AIPAC and its associates foreign lobbiests, requiring permanent foreign lobbiest status!"

Yes,,,,, in a sane honest world/country…. if the AIPAC lobby was declared in U.S. law (what it truely is) an agency of a foreign government…….. such designation would hobble their efforts to graft THEIR agenda, concerns and dreams onto the load of American dreams and hopes. [[[[]]]] And WORSE…… force American Taxpayers to pay for their Lebensraum INCLUDING their illegal genocide on the Palestinians… of displacement and destruction of their livelihoods…..

In truth, we live in a post "rule of law" America— if there ever WAS a "rule of law" America… We have allowed the immoral forces of usury, conquest and outright larceny to run so wild, that the true interests of Americans enshrined in the constitution,by our forefathers dreams have been purchased and snuffed by the least scrupulous among us as an impediment to profit and (lately) outright theft and fraud…

The true villains are US…. It is we who have elected (and RE-ELECTED!!!) the charlatans… It is WE who have allowed our elections to become auctions,,,, It is WE who have enabled the thieves and those selling the Kool-Aid of "exceptionalisn" that allows US to spend trillions and kill millions in false flag wars such as Vietnam and Iraq… to thrive and prosper….. and I fear it will be so and thus…. until the dollar is collapsed…

omop

Further proof that Rabbi Yosef tells it like it is……True to expressed views gentiles are considered [DONKEYS] expandable and exist to serve the “chosen people”.

According to news reports Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, famous in recent memory for having said the following which was published in the Jerusalem Post.

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel…Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat…With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for the Jews…”

Mehr

Tell the dumb phony "progressives" at the ANTIWAR.COM

byrd_bahls22

so..Israel is 'god' now ? pardon me if I do not genuflect….

Ralph

Our government is elected to serve THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS PEOIPLE.. For too long we have worried as much or more about the rest of the world as our own interests! We are trying to balance our budget by every trick available BUT I HAVE YET TO YEAR ANY REDUCTION IN FOREIGN AID, INCLUDING OUR FUNDS TO SUPPORT OUR STEP CHILD, ISRAEL! We are meddling in every part of the world, trying to dictate what form of government each should have and keeping hundreds of thousands of troops spread out, with a military budget which is larger than the next ten cuntries combined. Just who do these people in Washington represent? Why don't we get rid of the foreign government lobbies in DC, especially AIPAC!, let the MidEast keep its Muslim religion and quit meddling in their governments, as we did in Iran some years back when our government, along with Britain and its oil compny upset the government of Iran and re-installed the Shah. This mistake still haunts our relationship Iran! I wonder just how many of our folks in DC are, indirectly, on the payroll of other countries!!

why American government support Israel? and why an Amrican president has to praise Israel during the election? and Americans are so naive? and why Americans never complain about anything? can anyone answer these questions

DennyC

Does anyone really believe that Hagel will make any difference at all. His position does not make policy. It enables policy. I will wager, with anyone, quite a large sum that within a few months of his appointment he will prove to be just as ruthless, heartless and destructive as all of those secretaries who came before him.